Tel Aviv
TEL AVIV
A coastal city founded in Ottoman Palestine in 1909. As Jewish settlers arrived in Palestine in the late nineteenth century, they found it difficult to find affordable homes in the overcrowded residential areas of Jerusalem and Jaffa. Ahuzat Bayit, the building
society, purchased beachfront property and underwrote the construction of Tel Aviv's first houses in 1909. Initially planned as a residential suburb of Jaffa, Tel Aviv expanded rapidly. By 1935 the population had grown from 2,000 (in 1909) to 120,000, and the city included businesses, factories, and the headquarters of Histradut, the umbrella trade union organization. In 1948 David Ben-Gurion proclaimed Israel's statehood at a meeting held in the Tel Aviv Museum. In 1950 Jaffa was incorporated with Tel Aviv into the twin city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. The population of central Tel Aviv reached 350,000 by the early twenty-first century, but the population of greater Tel Aviv, with its sprawling suburbs and outskirts, was 2.5 million.